Entry tags:
Infinity Gate by MR Carey
Infinity Gate
3/5. Scifi about an Earth scientist who, at the end of our world, develops the technology to step to an infinity of alternate earths, many of whom are federated. And she steps straight into a brewing war with the machine intelligences.
There’s this quality to Carey’s work that is really unusual. It’s that he draws vivid, very particular characters, but given a choice, he will pick story over character every time. This book is a prime example – the story passes from hand to hand, settling with someone for a hundred pages or so before moving on. No one is entirely forgotten, but the structural shape he is building is more important to him than any one person here. Sometimes that style works for me, and parts of this book were exciting or sad or strange. But sometimes I’m just not that kind of reader, and this was one of those.
Also, not to be mean, but how many recent publications have pulled the omniscient POV but it’s actually just ( spoiler I guess ) trick? Here, trick is kind of overplaying it; I almost didn’t spoiler cut that since it was so obvious so early. But I’ve just seen it a lot lately, and it’s not as interesting as it was the first three or four times.
Still. He’s a strong, flexible writer, and this story is reaching for themes of resource consumption, colonialism, and the like. I just wasn’t in the mood for his very particular style.
Content notes: Violence, slow apocalypse in the background, authoritarianism, police state, child labor, wage slavery
3/5. Scifi about an Earth scientist who, at the end of our world, develops the technology to step to an infinity of alternate earths, many of whom are federated. And she steps straight into a brewing war with the machine intelligences.
There’s this quality to Carey’s work that is really unusual. It’s that he draws vivid, very particular characters, but given a choice, he will pick story over character every time. This book is a prime example – the story passes from hand to hand, settling with someone for a hundred pages or so before moving on. No one is entirely forgotten, but the structural shape he is building is more important to him than any one person here. Sometimes that style works for me, and parts of this book were exciting or sad or strange. But sometimes I’m just not that kind of reader, and this was one of those.
Also, not to be mean, but how many recent publications have pulled the omniscient POV but it’s actually just ( spoiler I guess ) trick? Here, trick is kind of overplaying it; I almost didn’t spoiler cut that since it was so obvious so early. But I’ve just seen it a lot lately, and it’s not as interesting as it was the first three or four times.
Still. He’s a strong, flexible writer, and this story is reaching for themes of resource consumption, colonialism, and the like. I just wasn’t in the mood for his very particular style.
Content notes: Violence, slow apocalypse in the background, authoritarianism, police state, child labor, wage slavery